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PALGRAVE SERIES IN
INDIAN OCEAN WORLD STUDIES
Animal Trade Histories

in the Indian Ocean World
Edited by
Martha Chaiklin
Philip Gooding
Gwyn Campbell
Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies
Series Editor
Gwyn Campbell
Indian Ocean World Centre
McGill University
Montreal, QC, Canada
This is the first scholarly series devoted to the study of the Indian Ocean
world from early times to the present day. Encouraging interdisciplinarity,
it incorporates and contributes to key debates in a number of areas including
history, environmental studies, anthropology, sociology, political science,
geography, economics, law, and labor and gender studies. Because it breaks
from the restrictions imposed by country/regional studies and Eurocentric
periodization, the series provides new frameworks through which to inter-
pret past events, and new insights for present-day policymakers in key areas
from labor relations and migration to diplomacy and trade.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14661
Martha Chaiklin • Philip Gooding
Gwyn Campbell
Editors
Animal Trade
Histories in the Indian
Ocean World
Editors
Martha Chaiklin Philip Gooding
Historian Indian Ocean World Centre
Columbia, MD, USA McGill University
Gwyn Campbell
Indian Ocean World Centre
McGill University
Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies

ISBN 978-3-030-42594-4 ISBN 978-3-030-42595-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42595-1
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: © Archivart / Alamy Stock Photo
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To Joseph B. Chaiklin (1929–2019), devoted to dogs and good writing.
And to Émilie, Adèle, and Mathis, two of whom gave us the pleasure of
joining us during the writing of this book.
Contents
1 Introduction: Investigating Animals, Their Products,

and Their Trades in the Indian Ocean World 1
Martha Chaiklin and Philip Gooding
2 The Dutch East India Company and the Transport of

Live Exotic Animals in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries 27
Ria Winters
3 Can the Oyster Speak? Pearling Empires and the

Marine Environments of South India and Sri Lanka,
c. 1600–1900 65
Samuel Ostroff
4 Chank Fishing in South India Under the English East

India Company, 1800–40 99
Sundar Vadlamudi
5 Horses and Power in the Southern Red Sea Region Since

the Seventeenth Century125
Steven Serels
vii
viii Contents
6 The Donkey Trade of the Indian Ocean World in the

Long Nineteenth Century147
William Gervase Clarence-Smith
7 Commercialisation of Cattle in Imperial Madagascar,

1795–1895181
Gwyn Campbell
8 Ayutthaya’s Seventeenth-Century Deerskin Trade in the

Extended Eastern Indian Ocean and South China Sea217
Ilicia J. Sprey and Kenneth R. Hall
9 The Ivory Trade and Political Power in Nineteenth-

Century East Africa247
Philip Gooding
10 The Flight of the Peacock, or How Peacocks Became

Japanese277
Martha Chaiklin
Index315
Notes on Contributors
Gwyn Campbell is the founding Director of the Indian Ocean World

Centre at McGill University, Canada, General Editor of the Palgrave Series
in Indian Ocean World Studies, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of
Indian Ocean World Studies. He holds degrees in Economic History from
the universities of Birmingham and Wales; has taught in India, Madagascar,
Britain, South Africa, Belgium, and France; and was an academic consul-
tant for South Africa in inter-governmental negotiations that resulted in
the formation of an Indian Ocean regional association in 1997. He held a
Canada Research Chair in Indian Ocean World History from 2005 to
2019, a Humboldt Award from 2017 to 2019, and directs a major inter-
national research project entitled “Appraising Risk, Past and Present:
Interrogating Historical Data to Enhance Understanding of Environmental
Crises in the Indian Ocean World.” His publications include Africa and
the Indian Ocean World from Early Times to 1900 (2019), David Griffiths
and the Missionary “History of Madagascar” (2012), and An Economic
History of Imperial Madagascar, 1750–1895 (2005).
Martha Chaiklin received her PhD from Leiden University, the
Netherlands. She first became interested in animals when researching her
first book, Cultural Commerce and Dutch Commercial Culture (2003)
and noticed many references to birds in Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie
(VOC) documents. This resulted in “Exotic Bird Collecting in Early
Modern Japan,” in JAPANimals, Greg Pflugfelder and Brett Walker eds.
(2005). Since then she has combined her interest in material culture and
animals with publications on elephants, live animal gifts, tortoiseshell,
and ivory.
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
William Gervase Clarence-Smith is Emeritus Professor of History at

SOAS (the School of Arts, Sciences & Education), University of London,
UK. He has written on the history of various animals around the world,
notably on the trade and transport of equids in the Indian Ocean, the rais-
ing of equids in Mainland Southeast Asia, and the global spread of
Trypanosoma evansi (surra) as a disease of equids and camels. He is
researching a global history of mules from around 1400 CE.
Philip Gooding is a postdoctoral fellow at the Indian Ocean World
Centre, McGill University, Canada, and a course lecturer in McGill’s
Department of History and Classical Studies. He holds a PhD in History
(2017) from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London. He has written articles in Slavery and Abolition and The Journal
of African History, among other journals, and is broadly interested in
examining the commercial, cultural, and environmental linkages between
the history of the East African Great Lakes and the history of the wider
Indian Ocean World.
Kenneth R. Hall is Professor of History at Ball State University, USA. He
studies the history of the Indian Ocean and South China and Java Seas
with a focus on India and Southeast Asia. He has written several mono-
graphs, most recently A History of Early Southeast Asia: Maritime Trade
and Societal Development 100–1500 (2010); and Networks of Trade, Polity,
and Societal Integration in Chola-Era South India c. 875–1400 (2013). He
has also written many academic journal articles and book chapters, and has
edited several volumes that are focal on revisionist historiography with
specific focus on transitional Asian urban and societal networking. These
include The Growth of Non-Western Cities: Primary and Secondary Urban
Networking in the Non-West c. 900–1900 (2011); Secondary Cities and
Urban Networking in the Indian Ocean Realm c. 1400–1800 (2008); and
Cross-Cultural Networking in the Eastern Indian Ocean Realm, c.
100–1800 (2019).
Samuel Ostroff holds a joint PhD in History and South Asia Studies
from the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He holds an MA in South Asia
Studies from the University of Pennsylvania; an MA in Middle Eastern,
South Asian, and African Studies from Columbia University; and a BA in
History from Bucknell University. Based on primary archival research in
India, England, and the Netherlands, Ostroff’s dissertation examines the
intersection of the pearling economy, Dutch and British imperialism, and
the marine environment in the Gulf of Mannar in the eighteenth and
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi
ineteenth centuries. He is the Publications Officer at the Institute for

n
Health Metrics and Evaluation and an affiliate lecturer in the Henry
M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington,
Seattle.
Steven Serels is a research fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient
in Berlin, Germany. He holds a Master’s (2007) and a PhD in History
(2012), both from McGill University, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from
The Cooper Union (2005). He is the author of Starvation and the State:
Famine, Slavery and Power in Sudan 1883–1956 (2013) and The
Impoverishment of the African Red Sea Littoral, c1640–1945 (2018).
Ilicia J. Sprey is Professor of History and the Dean of the School of Arts,
Sciences & Education at Ivy Tech Community College, Lafayette Campus,
Indiana, USA. She focuses on fifteenth- through eighteenth-century
Cochinchina, the Vietnamese littoral, and the Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya,
and she is particularly interested in these regions’ contributions to com-
merce and the political treatment of minority populations within them.
Her work has been published in Southeast Asian- and European-focused
journals, and she has contributed to multiple edited volumes related to
maritime trade, cultural influences and exchanges, and the ecological and
human impact of trade on indigenous peoples. These volumes include
India and Southeast Asia: Cultural Discourses (2018), Subversive Sovereigns
Across the Seas: Indian Ocean Ports-of-Trade from Early Historic Times to
Late Colonialism, Asiatic Society (2017), Rethinking Connectivity: Region,
Place and Space in Asia (2016), and Vanguards of Globalization: Port-
Cities from the Classical to the Modern (2013).
Sundar Vadlamudi is Assistant Professor of History at the American
University of Sharjah, UAE. He is a historian of South Asia and the Indian
Ocean World. His research areas include Islam in South Asia, Indian
Ocean trade, economic history of South Asia, and socio-religious reform
movements in India. His current research focuses on the participa-
tion of Tamil-speaking Muslims in the maritime trade in the Indian
Ocean during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Ria Winters is a Dutch historian and artist who specialises in animal his-
tory and the culture of the Dutch Golden Age. She works at the Allard
Pierson Museum and Institute of the University of Amsterdam. Her most
recent subjects involve the history of South African society and literature,
for which she is developing a deeper understanding by attending master
classes at the African Studies Center of Leiden University.
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 Boyd Smith, ‘The Arab and the Camel.’ From Aesop’s Fables
(New York: Century Company, 1911), 159. Collection of the
Library of Congress3
Fig. 2.1 A rare instruction written in 1624 from the central
management of the VOC (Heeren XVII), with the request to
bring back rare animals—‘Rare gedierten’—on the ships. The
heading is captured in the rectangular outline. National
Archive, The Hague. NL-HaNA, VOC, 1.04.02,
inv.nr. 5001, unfoliated manuscript 33
Fig. 2.2 Engraving of a cassowary by Crispijn van den Queborn,
approx. 1614. The bird was a gift of shipmaster Willem
Jacobsz to Prince Maurits of Orange. Rijksmuseum
Amsterdam, inv.nr. RP-P-OB-79.498 34
Fig. 2.3 Zebu, gouache by Jan Velten, Amsterdam, approx. 1700.
Artis Library of the University of Amsterdam, Collection
Jan Velten, inv.nr. 17R 41
Fig. 2.4 Chukar partridge, gouache by Jan Velten, Amsterdam,
approx. 1700. Artis Library of the University of Amsterdam,
Collection Jan Velten, inv.nr. 7R 46
Fig. 2.5 Engraving of the Dutch in Mauritius, published in the travel
narrative published in 1601, the ‘True report,’ by Jacob van
Neck and Wybrant van Warwijck: Het tvveede boeck, iournael
oft dagh-register, inhoudende een warachtich verhael ende
historische vertellinghe vande reyse, gedaen door de acht schepen
van Amstelredamme, gheseylt inden maent martij 159852
Fig. 3.1 Oysters. De Jonville Manuscript, British Library 74
Fig. 3.2 Oysters. De Jonville Manuscript, British Library 74
xiii
xiv List of Figures
Fig. 7.1 Cattle horns ritually displayed. From: Louis Catat, Voyage à
Madagascar (Paris: Hachette, 1895), 165 184
Fig. 7.2 Fattening cattle. From: William Ellis, History of Madagascar.
Comprising also the Progress of the Christian Mission
Established in 1818; and an Authentic Account of the Recent
Martyrdom of Rafaravavy; and of the Persecution of the Native
Christians, vol. I (London: Fisher, Son, & Co., 1838), 46 189
Fig. 7.3 Fandroana bullock c. 1896. From: 5.3 IMP-NMS-A02-104
in: Gwyn Campbell, David Griffiths and the Missionary
‘History of Madagascar’ (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 559 191
Fig. 7.4 Embarking cattle at the port of Tamatave, Madagascar.
From: Illustrated London News (17 September 1864), Neg
No: 58_2303, National Maritime Museum 202
Fig. 8.1 Eastern Indian Ocean trade, c.1600–1850, ‘Map showing
the early European agencies, factories & Settlements [sic] in
the Indian archipelago, to illustrate [the] Report of the India
Office Records by Fered; Chas, Danvers, 1887. Collection of
the British Library 224
Fig. 8.2 French map of Ayutthaya (1686) showing the various
resident communities. From: ‘A Map of the City of Siam,’ in
La Loubère, A New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of
Siam (London: Thomas Horne, Francis Saunders, and
Thomas Bennet, 1693), 7 235
Fig. 9.1 Sketch map of major commercial centres in nineteenth-
century East Africa 252
Fig. 10.1 Archaeopteryx. The Thermopolis specimen found in Bavaria.
Jurassic Period. Photograph by Dr. Burkhard Pohl.
Collection of the Wyoming Dinosaur Center 280
Fig. 10.2 Tengu with feather fan, centre. Tengu nado [Tengu and
miscellaneous]. Hokusai school, mid-nineteenth century.
Collection of the Library of Congress 286
Fig. 10.3 Utagawa Toyoharu. Kyo¯to Sanjūsangendo¯ no zu [Illustration
of Kyoto Sanjūsangendō]. Between 1764 and 1772.
Collection of the Library of Congress. The archery target can
be seen at the end of the veranda 287
Fig. 10.4 Kubo Shunman, Hama-Yumi, and Buriburi-Gitcho, Boy’s
Toys, for the New Year Celebration, nineteenth century.
Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 288
Fig. 10.5 Torii Kiyotomo, Woman with Battledore and Shuttlecock,
1815–1820. Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 290
List of Figures xv
Fig. 10.6 Brush with peacock feathers. Feather-brush with Doran

(a kind of medicine case) with a Netsuke of a Rat. Toyota
Hokkei, c. 1816. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 292
Fig. 10.7 Stage one from Ehon takara no itosuji [Picture Book of
Brocades with Precious Threads] showing use of feathers.
Katsukawa Shunsho and Kitao Masashige 1786. 1917
reprint owned by D.G. Wittner 293
Fig. 10.8 Detail of figured silk jinbaori with peacock feathers. c.
1700–1800. ©Victoria and Albert Museum. Given by
T. B. Clarke-Thornhill 298
Fig. 10.9 Writing desk with feather brush. Peacock feathers are partially
visible to the left. From the series: Yoshiwara keisei bijin
awase jihitsu kagami [The actual mirror of a group of
beauties from the Yoshiwara]. 1784. Collection of the
Library of Congress. Gift of Crosby Stuart Noyes 300
Fig. 10.10 Kubo Shunman. Courtesan Dreaming of the New Year’s
Procession. 1814. Collection of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art 301
Fig. 10.11 Japonesque birthday cards depicting peacock feather and
other fans. c. 1884. Publishers Proofs of the Publications of
L. Prange & Co. Collection of the New York Public Library 306
Fig. 10.12 James McNeill Whistler. The Peacock Room. Oil paint and
gold leaf on canvas, leather, mosaic tile, and wood. Freer and
Sackler Gallery of Art. Gift of Charles Lang Freer 308
List of Tables
Table 4.1 EIC proclamation issued by the district collector of Tinnevelly

announcing the fishery for fasli 1229 (July 1819–June 1820) 105
Table 4.2 Terms of cowle (grant) issued for chank fishing in Tinnevelly
for fasli 1217 109
Table 4.3 List of offers made for renting Ramnad chank fishery (1800–01) 111
Table 4.4 Names of renters of chank fishery in Tuticorin from
1801 to 1833 112
Table 4.5 List of offers made for renting Tinnevelly chank fishery
(July 1819–June 1820) 113
Table 4.6 Government’s revenue from chank fisheries conducted
in Tinnevelly and Tanjore 117
Table 7.1 Mauritius: Malagasy cattle, meat and rice imports, 1824–26 196
Table 7.2 Morondava: Exports in October 1879–October 1880, &
1882 ($ Malagasy) 210
xvii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Investigating Animals, Their

Products, and Their Trades in the Indian
Ocean World
Martha Chaiklin and Philip Gooding
Introduction
Aesop may be as much a fable as the stories attributed to him, but some
place his origins in the Indian Ocean World (IOW), in Ethiopia to be pre-
cise.1 He was described as ugly, almost bestial, and in the early part of his
life, like an animal, unable to speak, but very wise. His liminal existence
made him both a suitable interlocutor for the various oral traditions about
1
Martinus Scriblerus, ‘In an essay concerning the origin of sciences’ (1741) seems to be
the origin of this idea that thereafter spread widely as fact. This collection of essays and paro-
dies were written by Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and others. It was an attack on ped-
antry and excessive attention to detail.
M. Chaiklin (*)
Historian, Columbia, MD, USA
e-mail: chaiklin@pitt.edu
P. Gooding
Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
e-mail: philip.gooding@mcgill.ca
© The Author(s) 2020 1

M. Chaiklin et al. (eds.), Animal Trade Histories in the Indian
Ocean World, Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42595-1_1
2 M. CHAIKLIN AND P. GOODING
human and animal behaviour that are attributed to him and an early
expression of the still common anthropomorphism of animals. In one of
Aesop’s lesser-known fables, a caravan merchant loads up his camel with
merchandise. The so-called ship of the desert can carry as much as a thou-
sand pounds, depending on breed, and were vital to the transport of goods
around the Indian Ocean. The merchant then asked, ‘Camel, would you
prefer to take the uphill road or the downhill road?’ The animal responded
sarcastically, ‘Why, is the flat one closed?’ This is generally interpreted to
mean that one should not ask obvious questions. Another reading is that
one should not purposely make things harder than needed. In this parable,
are we the merchants or the camel?
At first glance, it might seem like we are the merchants, loading up a
rich historiography with more baggage to carry across a road well-travelled.
But we would suggest that in fact we are the irascible camel, pointing out
not so much a gap in this historiography, but a way to shape it that has
frequently been bypassed for different roads. Until the development of
synthetics in the late nineteenth century (the first synthetic polymer was
patented in 1869), nearly everything humans used, like the beginning of
the game of 20 questions, was made from or dependent on animal, vege-
table, or mineral. Animals, domesticated, wild, or no longer animate,
therefore elucidate human history by evidencing their relationship with
their environment. If we take our surly camel as an example, these animals
were integral to trade throughout the IOW. They did not just provide an
efficient mode of transport for commodities over rough terrain, they
themselves were traded, and provided humans with meat, milk, and pro-
tection from the elements through clothing, blankets, and tents made
from their hair. Camel hair was also widely traded, and put to a variety of
uses, even artists brushes.2 Ignoring our brethren of the animal world is
like ignoring the flat road. Trade is only one of many potential avenues in
which to examine this relationship but it is an important one.
This volume is focused on the IOW, a macro-region that stretches from
southern and eastern Africa, through the Middle East, South Asia,
Southeast Asia, and East Asia and Australasia. It is the region that is
affected directly or indirectly by the Indian Ocean monsoon system of
winds, currents, and rains, which underpins agriculture, trade, and animal
2
Thomas Mortimer, A General Dictionary of Commerce, Trade and Manufacture (London:
Richard Phillips, 1810), n.p.
1 INTRODUCTION: INVESTIGATING ANIMALS, THEIR PRODUCTS… 3
Fig. 1.1 Boyd Smith,

‘The Arab and the
Camel.’ From Aesop’s
Fables (New York:
Century Company,
1911), 159. Collection of
the Library of Congress
habitats in IOW history.3 Animals, especially charismatic megafauna, are

central to popular imaginations of this ‘world.’ Whether they be the ‘Big
Five’ (lion, elephant, rhinoceros, leopard, and buffalo) of East Africa,
camels of the Middle East, tigers of South Asia, orangutans of Southeast
Asia, or koalas and kangaroos of Australasia, visions of different IOW
regions are intimately connected with their indigenous fauna.
3
Gwyn Campbell, Africa and the Indian Ocean World from early times to circa 1900
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 1–21.
Creatures of Commerce
The fauna of the IOW is as diverse as the region is capacious. They never-
theless form a cohesive field of study because they are connected beyond
their natural habitat or migration patterns through their exploitation by
human beings. Animals, their products, and their trades provide this vol-
ume with two key threads. Firstly, they inform historical understandings of
the connections around the IOW and from the IOW to other regions over
the longue-dureé. Secondly, they express how human history has been
shaped by human interactions with the changing natural world. Human
beings are ‘creatures of commerce,’ and animals were an important part of
that commerce. Homo sapiens, as part of the natural world, have interacted
with and utilized animals for their entire existence. The transition from
antagonism to a more complex relationship probably began with the
domestication of dogs some 15,000 years ago. Domestication is the pro-
cess of adaptation to assist human needs, and is generally considered to
involve physiological change. It occurs through a symbiotic relationship
based on mutual benefit, a pragmatic relationship that was until modern
times, the dominant relationship. Hunting is the most likely reason dogs
were domesticated. Ungulates like camels were not domesticated until
perhaps 6000 years ago. As Jared Diamond noted, domestication of ani-
mals as part of food production was ‘a prerequisite for the development of
guns, germs, and steel.’4 In other words, the domestication of animals was
not an abstract expression of power, but the foundation upon which pop-
ulation growth and technological development occurred. Thus maritime
trade, which is an element of each of the chapters in this book, is partly a
result of domestication of animals.
Intellectually, one significant way of understanding animals was through
classification, principally as a way to deal with human health. Animals are
found in many early texts because many of them were partially written
about medicinal practice. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) in the West and The
Classic of Mountain and Seas from China (third- to second-century BCE)
show the age and universality of classification. From the late Renaissance,
most intellectual engagement with animals was focused on their classifica-
tion, as exemplified perhaps by Konrad Gessner’s (1516–1565) De historia
animalium (1551–1558). At the same time, there was a developing
4
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germans and Steel (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
1997), 86.
discourse on the existence or lack of animal souls and what that ethical
concern would imply towards their treatment.5 Modern taxonomy is usu-
ally considered to date from Linnaeus. Nevertheless, it was Charles
Darwin’s The Origin of the Species (1859) that bridged the philosophical
gap to create a wider public discussion about what is human and what is
animal. The idea that humans were related to apes was considered demean-
ing and conflicted with biblical dogma. Darwin expanded on his position
in later, lesser-known works such The Expression of Emotions in Man and
Animals (1872), where he argued that expressions of emotion are univer-
sal across humanity and in the animal kingdom.6 The outrage that Darwin’s
contemporaries felt at being related to the animal kingdom in general and
apes in particular led to a deeper consideration of just what defined
humanity.7
Modern approaches to animal studies derive largely from the philo-
sophical approaches that evolved from Enlightenment thinkers, spread
through the work of Darwin, and accelerated through the environmental
consciousness and animal rights activism of the last half century.8 These
works often focus on moral or ethical perspectives, opposing the ‘specie-
sism’ that places human beings above other sentient beings to focus on the
emotional lives of animals, their agency, and the ‘anthropomorphisation’
of animal existence. This book was neither conceived nor executed to
advance these particular debates, although they will nonetheless contrib-
ute to them. Rather, it is a book about the IOW framed around animals.
This collection had its origins in a conference in October 2014, entitled
‘Trade in Animals and Animal Products in the Indian Ocean World from
Early Times to c.1900,’ organized by Omri Bassewich-Frenkel as part of
the Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University. It lies more firmly in
trends in world history through its environmental elements, chronological
5
See, for example, the various works in: Aaron Garrett, ed. Animal Rights and Souls in the
Eighteenth Century (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2000), 6 vols.
6
Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species (London: John Murray, 1859); Charles Darwin,
The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (London: John Murray, 1872).
7
Contemporary critics included Adam Sedgwick, John Herschel, and John Stewart Mill,
but also included many anonymous pamphlets and articles.
8
For a summary of existing output in one IOW region, see: Sandra Swart, ‘Animals in
African history,’ Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (2019), 1–16. Richard
Grove also traces aspects of this ‘environmental consciousness’ to the deeper past. See:
Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial expansion, tropical island Edens, and the origins
of environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
span, and transnational and transregional nature than in animal studies,

despite its subject matter. Nevertheless, as the following chapters show,
the intersection of humans and animals is a distinctive way to examine the
world. As the 2014 conference announcement phrased it, ‘By exploring
the long-distance trade in animals and animal products as economic, cul-
tural, and ecological phenomenon, this [work] … will seek to interrogate
the concept of the Indian Ocean as a “world.”’ In other words, the study
of animals is fundamental to the conceptualization of the IOW.
Animals are the concatenation of much human activity based on their
perceived value or threat. As historical subjects, animals provide insight
into many important historical processes like capitalism, imperialism, reli-
gious and cultural practices, and power dynamics: it has been said that,
‘Until the lion has his historian, the hunters will always be hero.’9 History
is a human construct for human knowledge. In an anthropocentric uni-
verse, animals are ‘integral to global exchange systems’ like the IOW.10
Through their exploitation, animals affected not just animal-to-animal
relationships, but human-to-human ones, too. One of the most significant
motives for human interference in the lives of animals, except as food, was
for commerce. Moreover, excess comestibles, whether accidental or pur-
poseful, were also traded or sold. Commerce in animals and their parts
could significantly impact material cultures far from their place of origin.
It showed ‘the commercial, material and symbolic networks’ created
through demand in distant markets, physically shaping the contours of
human activity.11 Trading patterns were influenced by where animals lived,
where they could survive, and locales that lacked the proper habitat.
Diplomatic gifts were often used to facilitate trade. Thus, the examination
of the human-animal interactions of the IOW with a focus on commerce
can help us understand the characteristics of the IOW, the human motiva-
tions for these interactions, and the way they affected the various regions
and living things in the macro-IOW.
9
Inscription on the wall in Elmira observed by James Huffman. James L. Huffman, Down
and Out in Late Meiji Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992), 1.
10
Susan McHugh and Garry Marvin, ‘Human-animal studies – global perspectives,’ in
Human-Animal Studies, eds. Susan McHugh and Garry Marvin, (London and New York:
Routledge, 2018), 1.
11
Christine Guth, ‘Towards a global history of shagreen,’ in The Global Lives of Things: The
material culture of connections in the early modern world, eds. Anner Gerritsen and Giorgio
Riello (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016).
Understanding the IOW Through Trades in Animals

and Animal Products
Trades in animals and animal products are a relatively understudied feature

of IOW historiography. Although individual animals and animal products
occasionally feature prominently, they rarely feature as a distinct category
of trade. This is somewhat surprising given many animals’ intimate asso-
ciations with different IOW regions and given commerce’s centrality to
early and ongoing IOW historiography.12 Spices, tea, porcelain, and pre-
cious metals have received significantly more attention. This is perhaps
because it reflects European demand for these products as they first entered
the region at the end of the fifteenth century and the somewhat recent
conceptualization of the Indian Ocean as a region. Moreover, when ani-
mals and their products have been considered an integrated feature of the
IOW’s commercial history, they are often either divorced from their con-
dition as living organisms or from living organisms, or they are ornamen-
tation to political events like diplomacy without any centrality to the
process. Yet, there are several ways in which a categoric focus on animals,
their products, and their trades can elucidate additional layers of historical
understanding of the IOW.
With regard to trades in live animals around the IOW before the eigh-
teenth–nineteenth centuries, most is known about exchanges of ‘charis-
matic megafauna’—large animals with symbolic value, such as elephants,
ostriches, or giraffes, because of their singular nature.13 Important animal
products, meanwhile, included ivory, pearls, rhinoceros’ horns, and tor-
toises’ shells, which have provided a subtext for commercial interactions in
the region.14 The prominence of these animals and products is at least
partly a result of the nature of the available archival material. Charismatic
12
See, for example: K.N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An eco-
nomic history from the rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985);
Michael N. Pearson, The Indian Ocean (London: Routledge, 2003); Edward A. Alpers, The
Indian Ocean in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
13
Alan Mikhail, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013),
109–36; Thomas T. Allsen, The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 233–64.
14
Kenneth McPherson, The Indian Ocean: A history of people and the sea (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1993), 41; Himanshu Prabha Ray, ‘Early maritime contacts between South
and Southeast Asia,’ Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 20, 1 (1989), 46; Ian C. Glover,
‘The archaeological evidence for early trade between South and Southeast Asia’ in The
Indian Ocean in Antiquity, ed. Julian Reade (London: Routledge, 2009), 368; Lionel
megafauna were demanded most significantly by elites, who have histori-

cally been the most likely to leave archival traces of their transactions.15
Additionally, keeping charismatic megafauna alive on oceanic voyages was
a significant undertaking, requiring as they did food, care, and often more
space than other commodities, which could be packed closely together.
The logistics involved in this process again led to the creation of docu-
ments, which have since been collected into archives. Smaller-scale trades
of smaller and domesticated animals or animal products over terrestrial
spaces do not feature so prominently in documentary records. Often, they
were private undertakings by individuals; or they involved trades in meats
or working animals—the kinds of animals and animal products that the
general populace needed to survive or to complete everyday tasks. The
types of animal and animal product trades we know most about in the
deeper past from documentary sources, therefore, were notable for their
symbolic rather than their profitable impact.
The combination of elite demand and symbolic value led to the presen-
tation of charismatic megafauna and animal products in diplomatic
exchanges, in what has since been referred to by Halvard Leira and Iver
B. Neumann as ‘beastly diplomacy.’16 Gifting animals could curry favour
with peers or stronger regional powers, or project superiority over rivals.17
South Asians exported ivory and pearls to China and an elephant to France
via the Middle East during the first millennium CE for these purposes.18
After c.1500, the earliest Europeans in the IOW also gave ‘exotic’ animals
of both European and IOW origin to rulers in efforts to gain preferential
Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text with introduction, translation, and commentary
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 61
15
Thomas R. Trautmann, Elephants and Kings: An environmental history (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 2015), 107; Mikhail, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt, 109–36.
16
Halvard Leira and Iver B. Neumann, ‘Beastly diplomacy,’ The Hague Journal of
Diplomacy, 12 (2016), 347–52.
17
Mikhail, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt, 110; Leira and Neumann, ‘Beastly diplomacy,’
346–9; Erik Ringmar, ‘Audience for a giraffe: European expansionism and the quest for the
exotic,’ Journal of World History, 17, 4 (2006), 389–93; Julie E. Hughes, Animal Kingdoms:
Hunting, the environment, and power in the Indian princely states (Cambridge MA: Harvard
University Press, 2013), 123–5.
18
Tansen Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The realignment of Sino-Indian relations,
600–1400 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003), 41, 164; Mikhail, The Animal in
Ottoman Egypt, 113–4; Janet Nelson, ‘The settings of the gift in the reign of Charlemagne,’
in The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages, eds. Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 133–4.
commercial arrangements.19 The recipients of such presents sought to use

them as symbols of their authority and prestige, displaying them in menag-
eries and sparking awe from their subjects.20 On the receipt of a giraffe in
Ming-dynasty China, for example, the emperor’s ‘officials prostrated
themselves before [him] and the animals and offered their congratulations.’21
What is known about early exchanges of animals and animal products in
the IOW shows them to be intimately connected to perceptions of and
connections between political elites.
In some ways, then, early animal and animal product exchanges follow
similar patterns to trades in other ‘luxury’ items in which certain goods
had what Pierre Bourdieu called ‘symbolic capital.’ This meant that their
ownership, display, and distribution was associated with political power,
and often led political leaders to seek to restrict their circulation.22
However, rulers had further reasons to limit the circulation of at least
some charismatic megafauna. This was because they could be used in war.
Rulers in Northeast Africa, the Middle East, and South and East Asia all
sought at various times to limit the export of horses, because they could
be used as cavalry.23 Also, the use of Indian elephants in war coupled with
19
Michael Gorgas, ‘Animal trade between India and western Eurasia in the sixteenth cen-
tury – The role of the Fuggers in animal trading,’ in Indo-Portuguese Trade and the Fuggers
of Germany, Sixteenth Century, ed. K.S. Mathew (New Delhi: Manohar, 1997), 207; Martha
Chaiklin, ‘The merchants ark: Live animal gifts in early modern Dutch-Japanese relations,’
World History Connected, 9, 1 (2012); Ria Winters, ‘The Dutch East India Company and the
transport of live exotic animals in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,’ (this volume).
20
Ringmar, ‘Audience for a giraffe,’ 392; Mikhail, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt, 110.
21
Ringmar, ‘Audience for a giraffe,’ 392.
22
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), Ch. 4
and later works; Jane Schneider, ‘Was there a pre-Capitalist world system?,’ Peasant Studies,
6, 1 (1977); Bernd-Stefan Grewe and Karin Hofmeester, ‘Introduction,’ in Luxury in Global
Perspective: Objects and practices, 1600–2000, eds. Bernd-Stefan Grewe and Karin Hofmeester
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2016), 1–26; Richard Gray and David Birmingham,
‘Some economic and political consequences of trade in central and eastern Africa in the pre-
colonial period,’ in Pre-Colonial African Trade: Essays on trade in central and eastern Africa
before 1900, eds. Richard Gray and David Birmingham (London: Oxford University Press,
1970), 3; Martha Chaiklin, ‘Imports and autarky: Tortoiseshell in early modern Japan,’ in
Luxury in Global Perspective: Objects and practices, 1600–2000, eds. Bernd-Stefan Grewe and
Karin Hofmeester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2016), 223–6.
23
Steven Serels, ‘Horses and power in the southern Red Sea region since the seventeenth
century,’ (this volume); Simon Digby, War-horse and Elephant in the Delhi Sultanate: A study
of military supplies (Oxford: Orient Monographs, 1971), 48–54; R.B. Azad Choudhary,
‘The Mughal and the trading of horses in India, 1526–1707,’ International Journal of
History and Cultural Studies, 3, 1 (2017), 1–18; Trautmann, Elephants and Kings, 213–4;
their royal symbolism in parts of South Asia probably meant that their
circulation was ‘doubly’ restricted. Elephants were at one time symbols of
the ‘primacy of the king’ and carriers of humans and weapons to and
across the battlefield.24 Both these features meant that they were revered
and highly demanded by political elites, but also protected from reaching
non-elite or enemy hands. This led, in some cases, to hunts for elephants
taking ‘royal’ connotations and meant that gifts of elephants had especially
strong diplomatic connotations—of both the recipient’s prestige and of
the urgency of gifter’s motives.25 Exchanges of charismatic megafauna,
especially those that could also be used in war, were highly symbolic
events, and represented power relations between elites in different parts of
the IOW.
Beyond the archive, work focusing on animals and animal products in
the natural sciences can shed light on previously unknown or debated
IOW connections. For example, archaeological evidence for animals native
to South Asia in East Timor that date from the middle of the third-
millennium BC gives a tantalizing glimpse into a potentially ancient
exchange network that transcended the Bay of Bengal.26 More recently,
while examining the ivory trade using a ‘multi-isotope approach,’ Coutu
et al. analysed the chemical composition of surviving ivories and ivory
products that emanated from East Africa in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries.27 They were able to establish within varying degrees
of certainty the provenance of much of the ivory, thereby indicating where
elephants were hunted and thus also the degree of connection between
those regions and the wider IOW. They further contended that this
method could be applied to older ivories and ivory products.28 Research
Hedda Reindl-Kiel, ‘No horses for the enemy: Ottoman trade regulations and horse gifting,’
in Pferde in Asien: Geschichte, Handel Und Kultur, ed. Bert G. Fragner, Ralph Kauz,
Roderich Ptak, and Angela Schottenhammer (Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 2009), 43–49; Jos Gommans, ‘The horse trade in eighteenth-century South
Asia,’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 37, 3 (1994), 248–50; Xiang
Wan, ‘The Horse in Pre-Imperial China’ (Unpublished PhD diss., University of
Pennsylvania, 2013).
24
Trautman, Elephants and Kings, 68.
25
Allsen, Royal Hunt, 14–33.
26
Glover, ‘Archaeological evidence,’ 377.
27
Ashley N. Coutu, Julia Lee-Thorp, Matthew J. Collins, and Paul J. Lane, ‘Mapping the
elephants of the 19th century East African ivory trade with a multi-isotope approach,’ PLoS
ONE, 11, 10 (2016), 1–23.
28
Ibid., 3.
along these lines could help to resolve a debate about the degree of con-
nection between East Africa’s interior and the wider IOW in the deeper
past. In this context, some Africanist scholars have recently contested pre-
vailing trends of IOW historiography that only consider East Africa’s
coastal and island regions as integrated parts of the IOW.29 They contend
that interior regions of East Africa have had significant connections to East
Africa’s Indian Ocean littoral, potentially since antiquity. While there is
significant archaeological and linguistic evidence for this, chemical analysis
of ivories may—or may not—support their assessments.
From c.1700, working animals and ‘bulk’ animal products enter the
archive more frequently for some parts of the IOW. Again, this is partly a
symptom of the nature of written sources. This process is associated with
the increasing prominence of Europeans in the region, who left extensive
archival traces in forms such as inventories, letters, missives, and journals.
However, it is also a result of a gradual change to the nature of trade across
much of the IOW. Plantations on East Africa’s coast and Indian Ocean
islands, for example, increased demand for food to feed enslaved people
and other workers. This necessitated the exchange of cattle and meat on
larger scales than previously.30 Additionally, increased global connectivity
gave non-elites access to goods that had previously been reserved for
elites. Tortoiseshell in Edo-period Japan, for example, ceased being a rare
commodity with an unreliable supply, and became a ‘necessity’ in the eyes
of the Japanese consumer through its use in hair ornaments, eye-glass
frames, and dildos.31 Similarly, products made of East African ivory, such
as piano keys and billiard balls, became widely sought after amongst North
America’s and Europe’s middle classes.32 This came hot on the heels of a
29
Felix Chami, ‘Graeco-Roman trade link and the Bantu migration theory,’ Anthropos, 94,
1/3 (1999), 205–15; Chapurukha Kusimba and Jonathan R. Walz, ‘When did the Swahili
become maritime?: A reply to Fleisher et al. (2015), and to the resurgence of maritime myo-
pia in the archaeology of the East African coast,’ American Anthropologist, 120, 3 (2018),
429–43; Gwyn Campbell, ‘Africa, the Indian Ocean world, and the ‘early modern’:
Historiographical conventions and problems,’ Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies, 1, 1
(2017), 24–37.
30
Gwyn Campbell, ‘Commercialisation of cattle in Imperial Madagascar, 1795–1895,’
(this volume); Helge Kjekshus, Ecology Control and Economic Development in East African
History: The case of Tanganyika 1850–1950, Second Edition (London: James Currey,
1996), 118–9.
31
Chaiklin, ‘Imports and autarky,’ 218–41.
32
John Frederick Walker, Ivory’s Ghosts: The white gold of history and the fate of elephants
(New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2009), Ch. 4.
similar process that occurred in South Asia, in which bangles made from
East African ivory were increasingly worn by women of all religious
denominations during marriage ceremonies.33 Thus, commerce in certain
IOW animals and animal products became increasingly linked to general
demand, rather than the demand by political elites.
This process has conventionally been associated with the increasing
prominence of Europeans and the rise of Capitalism. Indeed, these asso-
ciations have been given renewed energy in recent years through the con-
ceptualization of the ‘Capitalocene’ in world history. According to Jason
W. Moore, its central proponent, the Capitalocene literally translates as
‘Age of Capital.’ As a framework, it contests theories of the Anthropocene,
which trace the beginnings of the current climate crisis to human activities
from the mid-eighteenth century, or to the beginning of the industrial
revolution in Britain. Capitalocene scholars argue that Anthropocene the-
ories are wrong on two counts. Firstly, they argue that it is not humanity
that has instituted the current climate crisis, but a particular set of
humans—namely European Capitalists. Secondly, they argue that the
structures that underpinned the current climate crisis can be observed
through changes in human–environment interaction during the late fif-
teenth century—namely, an agricultural revolution in Northern Europe
and Europeans’ exploitation of resources (human, animal, and other natu-
ral) in the wider Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds. In this latter process,
they provocatively argue that European Capitalists put distant peoples,
environments, and animals to ‘work,’ which denied them their humanity,
which thus blurred the human/nature binary. In short, the Capitalocene
describes the process through which humans, landscapes, and animals
were exploited for European Capitalist expansion from c.1500.34
Although revolutionary for its centring of environmental change in
world history over the longue-durée, the Capitalocene builds most notably
33
Abdul Sheriff, Slaves, Spices & Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African com-
mercial empire into the world economy, 1770–1873 (Oxford: James Currey, 1987), 78.
34
Jason W. Moore, ‘The Capitalocene Part I: On the nature and origins of our ecological
crisis,’ The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44, 3 (2017); Jason W. Moore, ‘The Capitalocene Part
II: Accumulation by appropriation and the centrality of unpaid work/energy,’ The Journal of
Peasant Studies, 45, 2 (2018); Jason W. Moore, ed. Anthropocene or Capitalocene?: Nature,
history, and the crisis of Capitalism (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016); Jason W. Moore,
Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the accumulation of capital (London: Verso, 2015);
Donna Haraway, ‘Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making kin,’
Environmental Humanities, 6 (2015), 159-65.
on Immanuel Wallerstein’s concept of world-systems.35 Both the

Capitalocene and world-systems begin in the late fifteenth century, they
centre Europe and Capitalism in world history, and they seek to use the past
to understand the present. For Wallerstein, the ‘present’ meant the Capitalist
world system; for Moore, it is the current climate crisis. Nevertheless, these
parallels mean that the Capitalocene can be criticised on similar grounds to
world-systems. World historians, particularly of the IOW, were uneasy with
world-systems for its centring of Europeans, especially in the early modern
period.36 For example, scholars critiqued Wallerstein’s view of Portuguese
influence as ‘uncontested hegemons’ in the IOW as being neither histori-
cally accurate nor representative of wider European experiences in the
IOW.37 One can make similar critiques about Moore’s analysis of the early
modern Euro-Capitalist influence on IOW environments. He bases his
analysis on the Maluku Islands in southeast Asia, where the Dutch ‘organ-
ised the large-scale removal of “unauthorized” clove trees’ to secure a
monopoly on the global clove trade.38 This represented a transformation of
the environment and human relations for the purposes of European
Capitalist exploitation. However, this impact – significant as it was within its
locale – is neither representative of Dutch nor broader European experi-
ences in the wider IOW. Although they certainly tried, the Dutch were
unable (due to production and commercial complexities) to secure a
monopoly on pepper, which was around 25-30 times more valuable than
the clove trade.39 Meanwhile, tropical diseases limited the European imprint
35
Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, 4 Vols. (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1974-2011).
36
Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist agriculture and the origins
of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2011), 327. Wallerstein cites: Vitorino Magalhães-Godhino, L’économie de l’Empire
portugais aux XVe et XVIe siècles (Paris : Centre de recherches historiques, 1969). For a sum-
mary of the critique, see: Sanjay Subramanyam, ‘Introduction,’ in The Cambridge World
History Volume 6, Part 1: The construction of the global world, 1400-1800CE, eds. Jerry
H. Bentley, Sanjay Subramanyam, and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2015), 11-13.
37
The work of Michael Pearson is key here. See, especially: Michael N. Pearson, Before
Colonialism: Theories on Asian-European relations, 1500-1750 (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1988); Michael N. Pearson, ‘Introduction: Maritime history and the Indian Ocean
World,’ in Trade, Circulation and Flow in the Indian Ocean World, ed. Michael Pearson
(Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
38
Jason W. Moore, ‘The rise of cheap nature,’ in Anthropocene or Capitalocene, 108.
39
Pearson, Indian Ocean, 146.
in inland regions.40 European Capitalistic ideas may have spread to the IOW
in the early modern period, but their impact was uneven.
Centring animals allows for further critiques of the Capitalocene frame-
work in the context of the IOW. This is notable because several examples
in the Atlantic world, through the broader structures of the ‘Columbian
exchange,’ suggest a degree of cogency.41 The European introduction of
livestock to the Americas, for example, is associated with the degradation
of arable land, the exploitation of indigenous populations, and the estab-
lishment of colonial rule in physical and ideological form.42 This was the
animals’ ‘work’ in the construction of broader European-Capitalist struc-
tures.43 Similar patterns, however, did not pervade the IOW. Here,
Europeans encountered diverse animals already put to ‘work’ in various
capacities and in various conditions. Many IOW populations had been
using animal labour in agriculture for centuries before the European
arrival, for example – a divergence from the Atlantic world.44 Additionally,
in the IOW, when Europeans introduced new animals, they usually did so
to supplement or replace the roles of indigenous breeds.45 When they
attempted to exploit animals for new purposes in the IOW, they often
failed due to the macro-region’s distinct micro-environments and disease
profiles, such as with the introduction of elephant, ox-cart, and camel
transport in late-nineteenth-century East Africa.46 Instead of a sharp
40
David Arnold, ‘The Indian Ocean as disease zone, 1500–1950,’ South Asia, 14, 2 (1991).
41
Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and cultural consequences of 1492,
30th anniversary ed. (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2003).
42
Elinor G.K. Melville, A Plague of Sheep: Environmental consequences of the conquest of
Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Virginia DeJohn Anderson,
Creatures of Empire: How domestic animals transformed early America (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004).
43
Erica Fudge, ‘What was it like to be a cow?: History and animal studies,’ in The Oxford
Handbook of Animal Studies, ed. Linda Kalof (New York: Oxford University Press,
2014), 270-1.
44
For a classic summary of some important innovations, see: Andrew Watson, ‘The Arab
agricultural revolution and its diffusion, 700-1100,’ The Journal of Economic History, 34,
1 (1974).
45
William G. Clarence-Smith, ‘The donkey trade of the Indian Ocean world in the long
nineteenth century’ (this volume).
46
Karin Pallaver, ‘Donkeys, oxen and elephants: In search for an alternative to human
porters in nineteenth-century Tanzania,’ Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazi-
one dell’Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 65, 1-4, (2010); Philip Gooding, ‘Tsetse
flies, ENSO, and murder: The Church Missionary Society’s failed East African ox-cart exper-
iment of 1876-78,’ Africa: Rivista semestrale di studi e ricerche, N.S. 1, 2 (2019).
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good and kind. He says he will never leave me; that we must live together.
And he thinks he will always think so—poor boy! I have not the heart to tell
him that he will soon change.’
‘Why should he change? He may search far enough before he will find
such another home. If I were he, I would not change either. He is more to be
trusted than Oswald.’
‘Oh, you are mistaken. My boy is——’
‘I am not saying ill of him. If I ever wish to do that, I will not come to
his mother with it. But Oswald thinks more of himself. Where is he to-
night? He has left you alone, to bear all your loneliness, to think over
everything.’
‘You know I never taught my children that they were to keep by me. I
might have liked it, but I did not think it right. They are very, very good; but
no one can upbraid me with keeping them at my apron-strings.’
‘That is one thing I object to in women,’ said Mr. Beresford. ‘The most
sensible are so sensitive about those wretched little things that people say.
What does it matter what people say who know nothing? Do you think a
club is so much better than your apron-strings, as you call them? Why
should you care for such vulgar reproach?’
‘I don’t know why; we are made so, I suppose; and if women are
sensitive, you must know the best of men will talk about our apron-strings;
when all we are thinking of is what is best for the children—trembling,
perhaps, and wondering what is best—giving all our hearts to it—some
careless fool will spoil all we are planning with his old joke about our
apron-strings—or some wise man will do it. It is all the same. But, never
mind; I have locked up all my tremblings in my own mind, and left them
free.’
‘And you have not repented? You have more confidence in them now
than if you had been less brave. But I wish Oswald had stayed at home with
you to-night.’
‘Oh, you must not blame Oswald,’ she cried, doubly anxious not to have
her son blamed, and not to allow Cara’s father to conceive any prejudice
against him. ‘It is in the evening he sees his friends; he is always ready
when I want him—during the day. It would not be good for the boy to let
him shut himself up. Indeed, it is my own doing,’ said Mrs. Meredith,
smiling upon him, with one of those serene and confident lies which the
sternest moralist cannot condemn.
Mr. Beresford shook his head a little; but he could not undeceive the
mother about her son, any more than she could confess how well she was
aware of all Oswald’s selfishnesses. They were selfishnesses, to be sure; or,
at least, the outside world would naturally call them so. To her the boy’s
conduct bore a different appearance. He thought of himself—this was how
she explained it. And how natural that was for anyone so watched over and
cared for as he had been! Was it not, indeed, her fault, who had always
supplied every want, satisfied every wish she knew of, and trained him, so
to speak, to have everything his own way, and to think that every other way
should yield to his? It was her fault; and as he grew older, and his mind
enlarged, he would grow out of it. This, though with an uneasy twinge now
and then, Mrs. Meredith believed, and though as clear-sighted as anyone to
her boy’s faults, thought less hardly, and perhaps more truly, of them than
strangers did. But there was a little pause after this, and a sense in her mind
that she had not convinced this critic, who considered himself more clear-
sighted than Oswald’s mother, and internally half pitied, had smiled at her
blindness. If critics in general only knew! for who is so sharp-sighted to all
these imperfections as the parent who thus endeavours to convince them of
the excellence of a child!
‘Edward gives up India, then!’ said Mr. Beresford. ‘I do not wonder; but
it is a fine career, and with his connections and antecedents——’
Mrs. Meredith gave a little shiver. ‘Do you think he should still go?’ she
asked, anxiously. ‘Indeed, I have not persuaded him. I have held my tongue.
And he never liked the idea. He did it for duty only. But he does not mean
to sink into idleness—he will work here.’
‘At what will he work? The Bar? Every young man I ever meet is going
to the Bar. There will soon be nobody left to make the necessary mischief,
and provide work for them. But if a man wants a fine career, India is the
place. You are going to stay in this house, notwithstanding your old
adviser?’
‘It does not matter to me,’ she said. ‘I can be as happy in one house as
another. It is Edward who wishes it.’
‘And then, if he sees someone he likes—and marries, and leaves you in
the lurch? Boys who are independent so young are sure to marry young.’
She shook her head. ‘Ah! how I wish it might be so! I would forgive him
for leaving me—if only my boy was happy.’
Mr. Beresford got up, and walked about the room. It was nothing
extraordinary, but only a way he had, and did not suggest to his friend any
accès of excitement.
‘You think marriage, then, so much the happiest condition?’ he said.
Mrs. Meredith made a pause before she replied. ‘Is that the question?
How can I answer at my age, and in—the circumstances you know. We
have not to settle abstract happiness. Feelings of that kind die out, and I am
not the person to speak. I think a woman—at one time of life—loves her
children more than ever she loved man.’
‘Some women——’
‘But it is not marrying in the abstract. My boy would be happy if he
could get—what he wants. But he never will get that,’ she added, with a
sigh.
‘What is so tragic about Edward’s love affairs?’ he asked, half laughing;
‘is it ever so serious at two-and-twenty?’
‘Ah, you laugh! but you would not have laughed, at his age, if you had
seen someone you were fond of secured by—another—who was not half so
true a lover perhaps; or, at least, you thought so.’
‘No,’ he said, growing grave. ‘That was different, certainly.’ And the
mind of the man travelled suddenly off, like a flash of lightning, back to the
flowery land of youth, that lay so far behind. The mind of the woman took
no such journey. Her love had ended, not in the anguish of a death parting,
but in estrangement, and coldness, and indifference. She remained where
she was, thinking only, with a sigh, how willingly she would give a bit of
her life, if she could—a bit of her very heart—to get happiness for her boy;
yet believing that to make one happy would be to ruin the other, and
standing helpless between the two. This was the only complication in her
mind. But in this the complications were many. Why did she say this, and
send him back to the days of young romance and passion? just when his
mind was full of the calmer affections and expedients of middle age, and
the question whether—to secure such a tender companion as herself, whom
he loved in a way, and whose absence impoverished life beyond bearing—
he should endeavour to return into the traditions of the other love which
was past for him as for her. Was it her friendly, gentle hand, so unconscious
of what he was meditating, that put him thus back at a touch into the old
enchanted world, and showed him so plainly the angel at the gates of that
faded, unfading Paradise; an angel, not with any naming sword, but with the
stronger bar of soft uplifted hands! Impossible! So it was—and yet what
else could be?
CHAPTER XXXV.
ROGER’S FATE.
Roger Burchell had made two unsuccessful visits to the Square—the first
absolutely painful, the second disappointing. On both occasions he had
failed to see Cara, except surrounded by strangers, who were nothing, and
indeed less than nothing to him; and both times he had gone away resolute
that nothing should induce him to tempt fate again, and come back. But a
young man who is in love persuades himself with difficulty that fate is
against him. It seems so unlikely and incredible that such a thing should be;
and short of a distinct and unmistakable sentence, hope revives after the
shock of a mere repulse has a little worn off. And then Roger had heard that
Cara was coming back to the Hill, and his heart had risen. When she was
there again, within his reach, without ‘these fellows’ by, who had troubled
him, Cara, he flattered himself, would be to him as she used to be; and,
distance lending enchantment to his vision, it appeared to him that she had
been much kinder in those days than she ever really was, and that she must
have understood him, and had seriously inclined to hear what he had to say.
Soon he managed to persuade himself that Cara had never been cold, never
had been anything but sweet and encouraging, and that it was only her
surroundings which had led her far away from him, and forced the attention
which she would have much more willingly bestowed upon himself, the
companion of her youth. This idea brought a rush of tender feeling with it,
and resolution not to be discouraged—never to take an answer again but
from Cara herself. How likely that she might have wondered too why he did
not take the initiative, why he did not insist upon speaking to her, and
getting her own plain answer! From this to the thought that Cara was
looking out for him every Sunday—wondering, disappointed, and alarmed
that he did not come—was but a step; and then Roger made up his mind to
go again, to insist on seeing her, and to ask her—simply to ask her, neither
more nor less—for there was very little time to lose. In the autumn he was
going to India; already his importance had risen with all belonging to him.
Up to this moment he had been only one of the boys, more or less, wasting
money, and limiting the advantages of the others; but in autumn he would
have an income of his own, and would be independent. The sense of
importance went to his head a little. Had he met the Queen, I think that he
would have expected her Majesty to know that he was going out to India in
October. It was not that he was vain of himself or his prospects; but a man
with an income is very different from a man without that possession. This is
a fact which no one can doubt. It was late in April when he came to the
Square for the third time, and so fine a day that everybody had gone out,
except Cara, who was not well. When he was ushered into the drawing-
room, he found her seated in an easy chair, with a shawl round her. Though
it was very sunshiny outside, it was rather cold indoors. Miss Cherry, who
stood by with her bonnet on, and her prayer-book in her hand, had just
ordered the fire to be lighted, and Cara, with her cold, had crept close to it.
Miss Cherry was going to the afternoon service.
‘I shall not be long, my darling. You will not miss me,’ she was saying,
‘though I don’t like to leave you on my last day.’
‘Don’t say it is the last day—and look, here is Roger to keep me
company,’ said Cara. ‘He will sit with me while you are away.’
How glad he was, and how eager to promise!
Miss Cherry thought no more of poor Roger than if he had been a
cabbage. She thought it might be an amusement to her niece to hear his
little gossip about home; and though she saw through his eagerness, and
suspected his object, yet she was not alarmed for Cara. Poor blind moth,
coming to scorch his wings, she said to herself, with a half-amused pity.
She did not pay very much attention to what he might have to suffer.
Indeed, unless one has a special interest in the sufferer, such pangs always
awake more or less amusement in the mature bosom; and, tender-hearted as
Miss Cherry was, her mind was too full of other things to have much leisure
for Roger, who was, she thought, anyhow too shy and awkward to commit
himself. She had her mind full of a great many things. She was going away,
now that her brother was not going. But though she was anxious about her
old aunt, and her home, which she had left for so long a period, she was
anxious about Cara too, and did not know which of these opposing
sentiments dragged her most strongly to one side or the other. And then she
was angry with her brother—angry with him for staying, and angry that
there had been an occasion for his going away. She went to afternoon
church at that drowsiest hour, when, if the mind has any temptation to be
dejected, or to be cross, it is crosser and more downcast than at any other
moment, and attended a sleepy service in an old dingy chapel, one of the
few which are still to be found remaining, in which a scattered congregation
drowse in big pews, and something like a clerk still conducts the responses.
Miss Cherry had been used to this kind of service all her life, and in her
gentle obstinacy of conservatism clung to it, though it possessed very few
attractions. She said her own prayers very devoutly, and did her best to join
in the irregular chorus of the clerk; and she sat very erect in the high corner
of the pew, and gave an undivided attention to the sermon, sternly
commanding every stray thought out of the way. But the effort was not so
successful as the valour of the endeavour merited. Miss Cherry did not like,
as she said, to have the good effect all dissipated by worldly talk after a
good sermon (and was not every sermon good in intention at least—
calculated, if we would only receive its directions, to do good to the very
best of us?), and for this reason she was in the habit of avoiding all
conversation on her way from church. But her resolution could not stand
when she saw Mr. Maxwell coming towards her from the other side of the
street. He had not been at church, she feared; but yet she had a great many
things to ask him. She let him join her, though she liked to have her
Sundays to herself.
‘Yes, I hope Miss Charity is better,’ he said. ‘Her energy has come back
to her, and if the summer would really come—— I hear of another change,
which I can’t say surprises me, but yet—your brother then is not going
away?’
‘No—why should he?’ said Miss Cherry. It is one thing to find fault with
one’s brother, and quite another thing to hear him criticised by his friend.
‘I thought so,’ said Maxwell; ‘he has no stamina, no firmness. I suppose,
then, he has made up his mind?’
‘To what, Mr. Maxwell? He has made up his mind not to go away.’
‘And to all the consequences. Miss Cherry, you are not so simple as you
wish people to think. He means, of course, to marry again. I had hoped he
would have more sense—and better feeling.’
‘I don’t know why you should judge James so harshly,’ said Miss
Cherry, with spirit. ‘Many people marry twice, of whom nothing is said—
and when they do not, perhaps it is scarcely from good taste or feeling on
their part.’
‘You are kind,’ said the doctor, growing red, and wondering within
himself how the d—— could she know what he had been thinking of? Or
was it merely a bow drawn at a venture, though the arrow whistled so
close?
‘Whatever wishes I might have,’ he added, betraying himself, ‘are
nothing to the purpose. Your brother is in a very different position. He has a
pretty, sweet daughter, grown up, at a companionable age, to make a home
for him. What would he have? Such a man might certainly be content—
instead of compelling people to rake up the past, and ask unpleasant
questions.’
‘Questions about James? I don’t know what questions anyone could ask
about my brother——’
‘Well,’ said Maxwell, somewhat hotly; ‘I don’t like doing anything in
the dark, and you may tell Beresford, if you like, Miss Cherry, all that I
have to say, that I shall oppose it. I shall certainly oppose it. Never should I
have said a word, had he let things alone; but in this case, it will become my
duty.’
‘What will become your duty?’ said Miss Cherry, aghast.
He looked at her wondering face, and his own countenance changed. ‘It
is not anything to bother you about,’ he said. ‘It is—a nothing—a matter
between your brother and me.’
‘What is it?’ she said, growing anxious.
He had turned with her, and walked by her side in his vehemence. Now
that she had taken fright, he stopped short.
‘It is only that I have a patient to see,’ he said; ‘and I am glad to be able
to make your mind quite easy about Miss Beresford. She is twice as strong
as either you or I.’
And before she could say another word he had knocked at a door they
were passing, and left her, taking off his hat in the most ordinary way. What
did he mean? or was it nothing—some trifling quarrel he had got into with
James? Miss Cherry walked the rest of the way home, alone indeed and
undisturbed, but with a strange commotion in her mind. Was there
something serious behind these vague threatenings, or was he only
depressed and cross, like herself, from the troublesome influence of spring,
and of this east-windy day?
Meanwhile, Roger sat down in front of Cara’s fire, which was too warm,
and made him uncomfortable—for he had been walking quickly, and he had
no cold. He thought she looked pale, as she reclined in the big chair, with
that fleecy white shawl round her, and he told her so frankly.
‘It is living in town that has done it,’ he said. ‘When you come back to
the country you will soon be all right.’
‘It is only a cold,’ said Cara. ‘I don’t know now when we shall go to the
country. Aunt Cherry leaves us to-morrow.’
‘But you are coming too? Yes, you are! Miss Charity told my mother so.
In a few days——’
‘Ah, that was before papa changed his plans; he is not going abroad now
—so I stay at home,’ said Cara.
The young man started up from his seat in the sudden sting of his
disappointment. He was too unsophisticated to be able to control his
feelings. Still, he managed not to swear or rave, as Nature suggested. ‘Good
Heavens!’ was the only audible exclamation he permitted himself, which, to
be sure, is merely a pious ejaculation; though a lower ‘Confound!’ came
under his breath—but this Cara was not supposed to hear.
‘Home?’ he said, coming back after a walk to the window, when he had
partially subdued himself. ‘I should have thought the Hill, where you have
lived all your life, and where everybody cares for you, would have seemed
more like home than the Square.’
‘Do not be cross, Roger,’ said Cara. ‘Why should you be cross?’
Something of the ease of conscious domination was in her treatment of him.
She did not take the same high ground with Oswald or Edward; but this
poor boy was, so to speak, under her thumb, and, like most superior
persons, she made an unkind use of her power, and treated her slave with
levity. ‘You look as if you meant to scold me. There is a little red here,’ and
she put up her hand to her own delicate cheek, to show the spot, ‘which
means temper, and it is not nice to show temper, Roger, especially with an
old friend. I did not choose my home any more than my name. You might as
well say you should have thought I would prefer to be May, rather than
Cara.’
‘It is you who are unkind,’ said the poor young fellow. ‘Oh, Cara, if you
remember how we have played together, how long you have known me!
and this is my last summer in England. In six months—less than six months
—I shall be gone.’
‘I am very sorry,’ she said. ‘But why should you get up and stamp
about? That will not make things any better. Sit down and tell me about it.
Poor Roger! are you really going away?’
Now, this was not the tone he wished or expected; for he was far from
feeling himself to be poor Roger, because he was going away. Offended
dignity strove with anxious love in his mind, and he felt, with, perhaps, a
vulgar yet very reasonable instinct, that his actual dignity and importance
made the best foundation for his love.
‘It is not so much to be regretted, Cara, except for one thing. I shall enter
upon good pay at once. That is worth sacrificing something for; and I don’t
care so much, after all, for just leaving England. What does it matter where
a fellow is, so long as he is happy? But it’s about being happy that I want to
speak to you.’
‘I think it matters a great deal where one is,’ said Cara; but she refrained,
out of politeness to him, who had no choice in the matter, to sing the praises
of home. ‘I have been so used to people wandering about,’ she said,
apologetically; ‘papa, you know; but I am glad that you don’t mind; and, of
course, to have money of your own will be very pleasant. I am afraid they
will all feel it very much at the Rectory.’
‘Oh, they! they don’t care. It will be one out of the way. Ah, Cara, if I
only could think you would be sorry.’
‘Of course I shall be sorry, Roger,’ she said, with gentle seriousness.
‘There is no one I shall miss so much. I will think of you often in the
woods, and when there are garden parties. As you are going, I am almost
glad not to be there this year.’
‘Ah, Cara! if you would but say a little more, how happy you might
make me,’ said the young man, self-deceived, with honest moisture in his
eyes.
‘Then I will say as much more as you like,’ she said, bending forward
towards him with a little soft colour rising in her cheeks. ‘I shall think of
you always on Sundays, and how glad we used to be when you came; and if
you have time to write to me, I will always answer; and I will think of you
at that prayer in the Litany for those who travel by land and water.’
‘Something more yet—only one thing more!’ cried poor Roger, getting
down upon one knee somehow, and laying his hand on the arm of her chair.
His eyes were quite full, his young face glowing: ‘Say you love me ever so
little, Cara! I have never thought of anyone in my life but you. Whenever I
hoped or planned anything it was always for you. I never had a penny: I
never could show what I felt, anyhow: but now I shall be well enough off,
and able to keep——’
‘Hush!’ said Cara, half frightened; ‘don’t look so anxious. I never knew
you so restless before; one moment starting up and walking about, another
down on your knees. Why should you go down on your knees to me? Of
course I like you, Roger dear; have we not been like brother and sister?’
‘No!’ he said; ‘and I don’t want to be like brother and sister. I am so
fond of you, I don’t know what to say. Oh, Cara! don’t be so quiet as if it
didn’t matter. I shall be well off, able to keep a wife.’
‘A wife?—that is a new idea,’ she said, bewildered; ‘but you are too
young, Roger.’
‘Will you come with me, Cara?’ he cried, passing over, scarcely hearing,
in his emotion, the surprise yet indifference of this question. ‘Oh, Cara!
don’t say no without thinking! I will wait if you like—say a year or two
years. I shall not mind. I would rather wait fifty years for you than have
anyone else, Cara. Only say you will come with me, or even to me, and I
shall not mind.’
Cara sat quite upright in her chair. She threw her white shawl off in her
excitement. ‘Me?’ she said; ‘me?’ (That fine point of grammar often settles
itself summarily in excitement, and on the wrong side.) ‘You must be
dreaming,’ she said; ‘or am I dreaming, or what has happened? I don’t
know what you mean.’
He stumbled up to his feet red as the glow of the fire which had scorched
him, poor boy, as if his unrequited passion was not enough. ‘If I am
dreaming!’ he said, in the sharp sting of his downfall, ‘it is you who have
made me dream.’
‘I?’ said Cara, in her surprise (the grammar coming right as the crisis got
over); ‘what have I done? I don’t understand at all. I am not unkind. If there
was anything I could do to please you, I would do it.’
‘To please me, Cara?’ he cried, sinking again into submission. ‘To make
me happy, that is what you can do, if you like. Don’t say no all at once;
think of it at least; the hardest-hearted might do that.’
‘I am not hard-hearted,’ she said. ‘I begin to see what it is. We have both
made a mistake, Roger. I never thought this was what you were thinking;
and you have deceived yourself, supposing I knew. I am very, very sorry. I
will do anything—else——’
‘I don’t want anything else,’ he said, sullenly. He turned his back upon
her in the gloom and blackness of his disappointment. ‘What else is there
between young people like us,’ he said, bitterly. ‘My mother always says
so, and she ought to know. I have heard often enough of girls leading men
on—enticing them to make fools of themselves—and I see it is true now.
But I never thought it of you, Cara. Whatever others did, I thought you were
one by yourself, and nobody like you. But I see now you are just like the
rest. What good does it do you to make a fellow unhappy—to break his
heart?’ Here poor Roger’s voice faltered, the true feeling in him struggling
against the vulgar fibre which extremity revealed. ‘And all your smiling and
looking sweet, was it all for nothing?’ he said—‘all meaning nothing! You
would have done just the same for anybody else! What good does it do
you? for there’s nobody here to see how you have made a laughing-stock of
me.’
‘Have I made a laughing-stock of you? I am more ready to cry than to
laugh,’ said Cara, indignantly, yet with quivering lip.
‘I know what you will do,’ he said; ‘you will tell everybody—that is
what you will do. Oh, it’s a devilish thing in girls! I suppose they never feel
themselves, and it pleases their vanity to make fools of us. You will go and
tell those fellows, those Merediths, what a laugh you have had out of poor
Roger. Poor Roger! but you shan’t have your triumph, Miss Beresford,’
said the poor lad, snatching up his hat. ‘If you won’t look at me, there are
others who will. I am not so ridiculous as to be beneath the notice of
someone else.’
He made a rush to the door, and Cara sat leaning forward a little, looking
after him,—her blue eyes wide open, a look of astonishment, mingled with
grief, on her face. She felt wounded and startled, but surprised most of all.
Roger!—was it Roger who spoke so? When he got to the door he turned
round and looked back upon her, his lips quivering, his whole frame
trembling. Cara could scarcely bear the pitiful, despairing look in the lad’s
eyes.
‘Oh, Roger!’ she said; ‘don’t go away so. You can’t imagine I ever
laughed at you, or made fun of you—I?—when you were always the
kindest friend to me. Won’t you say “good-by” to me kindly? But never
mind—I shall see you often before you go away.’
And then, while he still stood there irresolute, not knowing whether to
dart away in the first wrathful impulse, or to come back and throw himself
at her feet, all these possibilities were made an end of in a moment by Miss
Cherry, who walked softly up the stairs and came in with her prayer-book
still in her hand. Roger let go his hold of the door, which he had been
grasping frantically, and smiled with a pale countenance as best he could to
meet the new-comer, standing out into the room to let her pass, and doing
all he could to look like any gentleman saying ‘good-by’ at the end of a
morning call. Cara drew the shawl again upon her shoulders, and wrapped
herself closer and closer in it, as if that was all she was thinking of. If they
had not been so elaborate in their precautions they might have deceived
Miss Cherry, whose mind was taken up with her own thoughts. But they
played their parts so much too well that her curiosity was aroused at once.
‘Are you going, Roger? You must stop first and have some tea. I daresay
Cara had not the good sense to offer you some tea; but John will bring it
directly when he knows I have come in. Is it really true, my dear Roger, that
you are going away? I am sure I wish you may have every advantage and
good fortune.’
She looked at him curiously, and he felt that she read him through and
through. But he could not make any attempt to make-believe with Miss
Cherry, whom he had known ever since he could remember. He muttered
something, he could not tell what, made a hurried dash at Cara’s hand,
which he crushed so that her poor little fingers did not recover for half an
hour; and then rushed out of the house. Miss Cherry turned to Cara with
inquiring eyes. The girl had dropped back into her chair, and had almost
disappeared in the fleecy folds of the shawl.
‘What have you been doing to Roger?’ she said. ‘Poor boy! If I had
known I would have warned him. Must there always be some mischief
going on whenever there are two together? Oh, child! you ought to have let
him see how it was; you should not have led him on!’
‘Did I lead him on? What have I done? He said so too,’ cried poor Cara,
unable to restrain her tears. She cried so that Miss Cherry was alarmed, and
from scolding took to petting her, afraid of the effect she had herself
produced.
‘It’s only a way of speaking,’ she said. ‘No, my darling, I know you did
not. If he said so, he was very unkind. Do not think of it any more.’
But this is always so much easier to say than to do.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
BETWEEN THE TWO.
Oswald’s spirits very soon recovered the shock of his father’s death. He
was as light-hearted as ever after that day when he had visited little Emmy
at the hospital. Perhaps the satisfaction of having done a good action was in
his mind, for he was permitted to send Emmy to the seaside to the abode of
another sisterhood there. Agnes undertook after all to make the proposal for
him, which was graciously accepted, though she herself received another
admonition from the Superior. Sister Mary Jane appointed a meeting with
the other culprit who had made this charitable offer. As usual, he was not
supposed to be at all in fault. He was allowed to enter the sacred convent
gates, and wait in St. Elizabeth (for so the Superior’s room was entitled) till
Sister Mary Jane made her appearance, who made all the arrangements, and
took his money with much gracious condescension, but said nothing about
his ambassadress. Neither did he say anything, though he looked up eagerly
every time the door opened, and made furtive investigations, as well as he
could, through the long bare passages, where all sorts of instruction were
going on. When he opened (as he had no right to do) one of the doors he
passed, he found it to be full of infants, who turned round en masse to his
great terror, and saluted him with a simultaneous bob. They knew their
manners if he did not. But nowhere could he see Agnes, and not a word
about her did these unfeeling Sisters utter. To tell truth, they both waited for
each other. Sister Mary Jane had little doubt that his real mission at the
‘House’ was to find out all he could from her, whereas he on his part had a
lively anticipation of being called to task for following and talking to the
governess. Oswald had something of the feeling of a schoolboy who has
escaped when he found that no explanation was asked from him, and this
was the only reason he gave to himself for not making those inquiries into
Agnes Burchell’s family which he felt it was now really necessary to make.
But why immediately? Let him make a little more ground with her first, and
establish his own position. It charmed him a great deal more to think of
winning her in this irregular way than to plan the proper formal approach to
her parents, and application for their consent. To go and hunt up an
unknown family and introduce himself to them in cold blood, and ask them,
‘Will you give me your daughter?’ was quite alarming to him. He put it off,
as it is so easy to do. Certainly it would be his duty to do it, one time or
other, if his suit prospered, and he was not much afraid of the non-success
of his suit. But to go to them once for all, and inform them of his
engagement with their daughter, would, he thought, be a less difficult
matter—and all the delightful romance of the strange wooing would be lost
should he adopt the other plan. He felt that he had got off when the door of
the House closed upon him without any questioning from Sister Mary Jane;
but on her side the feeling was different. She was disappointed. She had
guessed how things were going, though not that they had gone nearly so far,
and she had been convinced that the young stranger’s anxiety to see her
arose from his honourable desire to set everything on a proper footing. The
reader will perceive that Sister Mary Jane was too simple and too credulous.
She was half vexed at the idea of losing the girl whom she had grown fond
of, and half glad that Agnes had found a new life more suited to her than the
routine of the House, for Agnes, it was evident, had no ‘vocation,’ and she
did not doubt for a moment what Mr. Oswald Meredith’s real object was.
She had made up her mind to allow herself to be sounded, to yield forth
scraps of information diplomatically, and finally to divulge everything there
was to tell, and set the eager lover off to the rectory at the foot of the hill.
But Sister Mary Jane was much dismayed to be asked no questions at all on
the subject. She could not understand it, and all the disagreeable stories she
had ever heard of the wolves that haunt the neighbourhood of a fold came
into her mind and filled her with dismay. Instead of being honourable and
high-minded, as she had taken it for granted he must be, was he designing
and deceiving, according to the ideal of men who used to appear in all the
novels? Up to this moment Sister Mary Jane had felt disposed to laugh at
the Lothario of fiction. Was this that mythical personage in his improper
person? The result of the interview on her side was that she reproved poor
Agnes gently for a few days, and declined to allow her to go anywhere, and
would not make any reference whatever to little Emmy’s going to the
seaside. Yes, she was to go. Oh, certainly, everything was arranged; but not
a word about Emmy’s friend, whose liberality procured her this change.
Agnes felt her heart sink. She had expected at least to be questioned about
the young stranger who must, she felt convinced, have asked questions
about her, and the silence was hard to bear. Once more, indeed, she was
permitted to go out to see Emmy before she went away; but the lay Sister,
the porteress, was sent with her on some pretext or other. Thus it happened
that when Oswald appeared as usual, he found himself confronted by a
respectable visage of forty under the poke-bonnet which he had supposed to
enshrine that Perugino countenance to which he had addressed so many
uncompleted verses. To be sure, the Perugino face was close by, but the
dragon kept so near that nothing could be said. Oswald talked a little about
Emmy loudly, by way of deceiving the respectable attendant. Then he
ventured upon a few hurried words in a lower tone. ‘Is this an expedient of
the Sisters?’ he said, hastily. ‘Am I never to speak to you again? Do they
think they can send me away like this, and get the better of me? Never! You
need not think so. You may send me away, but no one else shall.’
‘Mr. Meredith, for heaven’s sake——’
‘I am taking care; but you don’t mean to cast me off, Agnes?’
She gave him a sudden look. Her face was full of emotion. Fright,
melancholy, wistfulness, inquiring wonder, were in her eyes. What did he
mean? Was he as true, as reverent, as real in his love, as he had said? He
could not have realised in his confident happiness and ability to do
everything he wished the sense of impotent dejected wondering, and the
indignation with herself, for thinking about it so, which were in Agnes’s
mind. But something in her eyes touched and stopped him in his eager
effort to continue this undertone of conversation, to elude the scrutiny of
her companion. ‘Good-by,’ she said, with a slight wave of her hand,
hurrying on. Oswald was overcome in spite of himself. He fell behind
instinctively, and watched her moving quickly along the street with the
other black shadow by her in the sunshine. For the moment he ceased to
think of himself and thought of her. Had it been for her comfort that he had
crossed her path? It had been the most delightful new existence and pursuit
to him—but to her? Oswald could not have imagined the waves of varied
feeling, the secret storms that had gone over Agnes in the quiet of the
convent, on account of those meetings and conversations; but he did
consciously pause and ask himself whether this which had been so pleasant
to him had been equally pleasant to her. It was but a momentary pause.
Then he went after her a little more slowly, not unselfish enough, even in
his new care for her, not to be rather anxious that Agnes should be aware
that he was there. And, who knows? perhaps it was more consolatory for
her when she half turned round, standing at the door of the House waiting
for admittance, to see him pass taking off his hat reverentially, and looking
at her with eyes half reproachful and tender, than it would have been had he
accepted the repulse she had given him, and put force upon himself and
stayed absolutely away. He had no intention of staying away. He meant to
continue his pursuit of her—to waylay her, to lose no possibility of getting
near her. He was pertinacious, obstinate, determined, even though it
annoyed her. Did it annoy her? or was there some secret pleasure in the
warm glow that came over her at sight of him? She hurried in, and swore to
herself not to think of this troublesome interruption of her quiet life any
more. It was over. Emmy was removed, and there was an end of it. She
would think of it no more; and with this determination Agnes hastened to
the girls in St. Cecilia, and never left off thinking of it till weariness and
youth together, making light of all those simple thorns in her pillow,
plunged her into softest sleep.
Oswald went to Cara to unburden his mind next day. He did not quite
know what his next step was to be. ‘I think it is all right,’ he said. ‘You
should have seen the look she gave me. She would not have given me a
look like that if she had not liked me. It set me wondering whether she was
as happy as—such a creature as she is ought to be. Would they scold her
badly because I followed her? You know what women do—would they be
hard upon her? But why? If I insisted upon being there it was not her fault.’
‘They would say it was her fault. They would say that if she had refused
to speak to you you would not have come back.’
‘But I should. I am not so easily discouraged. Oh, yes, perhaps if she had
looked as if she hated me; but, then,’ said Oswald, with complacence, ‘she
did not do that.’
‘Don’t be so vain,’ said Cara, provoked. ‘Oh, I hate you when you look
vain. It makes you look silly too. If she saw you with that imbecile look on
your face she would never take the trouble of thinking of you again.’
‘Oh, wouldn’t she?’ said Oswald, looking more vain than ever. ‘Because
you are insensible, that is not to say that other people are. Of course I
should pull up if I did not mean anything. But I do mean a great deal. I
never saw anyone like her. I told you she was like a Perugino—and you
should hear her talk. She is thrown away there, Cara. I am sure she never
was meant to be shut up in such a place, teaching a set of little wretches. I
told her so. I told her a wife was better than a Sister.’
‘Are you so very sure of that?’ cried Cara; for what she called the
imbecile look of vanity on Oswald’s handsome face had irritated her.
‘Would it be so very noble to be your wife, Oswald? Now tell me. You
would like her to look up to you, and think you very grand and clever. You
would read your poetry to her. You would like her to order you a very nice
dinner——’
‘Ye-es,’ said Oswald, ‘but if she smiled at me sweetly I should forgive
her the dinner; and she should do as she pleased; only I should like her, of
course, to please me.’
‘And you would take her to the opera, and to parties—and give up your
club, perhaps—and you would take a great deal of trouble in furnishing
your house, and altogether enjoy yourself.’
‘Very much indeed, I promise you,’ said the young man, rubbing his
hands.
‘And now she is not enjoying herself at all,’ said Cara; ‘working very
hard among the poor children, going to visit sick people in the hospital. Oh,
yes, there would be a difference! The wife would be much the most
comfortable.’
‘I don’t like girls to be satirical,’ said Oswald. ‘It puts them out of
harmony, out of drawing. Now she said something like that. She asked me
in her pretty way if it would be better to make one man happy than to serve
a great number of people, and take care of those that had nobody to take
care of them. That was what she said; but she did not laugh, nor put on a
satirical tone.’
‘That shows only that she is better than I am,’ said Cara, slightly angry
still; ‘but not that I am wrong. Your wife! it might be nice enough. I can’t
tell; but it would not be a great life—a life for others, like what, perhaps,
she is trying for now.’
‘You are complimentary, Cara,’ said Oswald, half offended. ‘After all, I
don’t think it would be such a very bad business. I shall take good care of
my wife, never fear. She shall enjoy herself. Don’t you know,’ he added
with a laugh, ‘that everybody thinks you and I are going to make it up
between us?’
Cara turned away. ‘You ought not to let anyone think so,’ she said.
‘What harm does it do? It amuses everybody, keeping them on the
stretch for news. They think we are actually engaged. The times that
Edward has tried to get it out of me—all particulars—and my mother too. It
is far too good a joke not to keep it up.’
‘But, Oswald, I don’t like it. It is not right.’
‘Oh, don’t be so particular, Cara. I shall believe you are going to be an
old maid, like Aunt Cherry, if you are so precise. Why, what possible harm
can it do? It is only keeping them on the rack of curiosity while we are
laughing in our sleeves. Besides, after all, Cara mia, it is just a chance, you
know, that it did not come to pass. If it had not been for her, and that she
turned up just when she did——’
‘I am much obliged to you, Oswald. You think, then, that it all depends
upon you, and that the moment it pleased you to throw your handkerchief
——’
‘Do not be absurd, my dear child. You know I am very fond of you,’ said
Oswald, with such a softening in his voice, and so kind a look in his eyes,
that Cara was quite disarmed. He put his hand lightly upon her waist as a
brother might have done. ‘We have known each other all our lives—we
shall know each other all the rest of our lives. I tell you everything—you
are my little conscience keeper, my adviser. I don’t know what I should do
without you,’ he said; and, being of a caressing disposition, Oswald bent
down suddenly, and kissed the soft cheek which was lifted towards him.
There were two doors to the room—the one most generally used was in its
second division, the back drawing-room; but another door opened directly
out upon the staircase, and the two were standing, as it happened, directly in
front of this. By what chance it happened that Miss Cherry chose this door
to come in by, and suddenly, softly threw it open at this particular moment,
will never be known. There is something in such a salutation, especially
when at all ambiguous in its character, which seems to stir up all kinds of
malicious influences for its betrayal. The sudden action of Miss Cherry in
opening this door revealed the little incident not only to her but to Edward,
who was coming up the stair. Cara rushed to the other end of the room, her
lace scorching with shame; but Oswald, more used to the situation, stood
his ground, and laughed. ‘Ah, Aunt Cherry, are you really going?’ he said,
holding out his hand to her, while Edward stalked into the room like a
ghost. Of all the party, Oswald was the least discomposed. Indeed, it rather

Full Chapter Animal Trade Histories in The Indian Ocean World Martha Chaiklin PDF

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Animal Trade Histories in the Indian

Ocean World Martha Chaiklin

Currencies of the Indian Ocean World Steven Serels

Portuguese Decolonization in the Indian Ocean World

Connectivity in Motion: Island Hubs in the Indian Ocean

Slave Trade Profiteers in the Western Indian Ocean :

Imperial Muslims: Islam, Community and Authority in the

Textile Trades, Consumer Cultures, and the Material

Capacity Building for Maritime Security The Western

Indian Ocean Resources and Technology 1st Edition

Animal Trade Histories

More information about this series at

Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies

Cover illustration: © Archivart / Alamy Stock Photo

1 Introduction: Investigating Animals, Their Products,

2 The Dutch East India Company and the Transport of

3 Can the Oyster Speak? Pearling Empires and the

4 Chank Fishing in South India Under the English East

5 Horses and Power in the Southern Red Sea Region Since

6 The Donkey Trade of the Indian Ocean World in the

7 Commercialisation of Cattle in Imperial Madagascar,

8 Ayutthaya’s Seventeenth-Century Deerskin Trade in the

9 The Ivory Trade and Political Power in Nineteenth-­

10 The Flight of the Peacock, or How Peacocks Became

Gwyn Campbell is the founding Director of the Indian Ocean World

William Gervase Clarence-Smith is Emeritus Professor of History at

­ ineteenth centuries. He is the Publications Officer at the Institute for

Fig. 10.6 Brush with peacock feathers. Feather-brush with Doran

Table 4.1 EIC proclamation issued by the district collector of Tinnevelly

Introduction: Investigating Animals, Their

Martha Chaiklin and Philip Gooding

© The Author(s) 2020 1

Fig. 1.1 Boyd Smith,

habitats in IOW history.3 Animals, especially charismatic megafauna, are

span, and transnational and transregional nature than in animal studies,

Understanding the IOW Through Trades in Animals

Trades in animals and animal products are a relatively understudied feature

megafauna were demanded most significantly by elites, who have histori-

commercial arrangements.19 The recipients of such presents sought to use

on Immanuel Wallerstein’s concept of world-systems.35 Both the

BETWEEN THE TWO.

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1 Introduction: Investigating Animals, Their Products,

2 The Dutch East India Company and the Transport of

3 Can the Oyster Speak? Pearling Empires and the

4 Chank Fishing in South India Under the English East

5 Horses and Power in the Southern Red Sea Region Since

6 The Donkey Trade of the Indian Ocean World in the

7 Commercialisation of Cattle in Imperial Madagascar,

8 Ayutthaya’s Seventeenth-Century Deerskin Trade in the

9 The Ivory Trade and Political Power in Nineteenth-

10 The Flight of the Peacock, or How Peacocks Became

ineteenth centuries. He is the Publications Officer at the Institute for